Member profiles

Shane Kawenata Bradbrook is fighting for a tobacco-free Māori (indigenous New Zealander) nation – just as his ancestors once had.

Shane fights this battle through the non-profit organization Te Reo Mārama, which is based in Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand. He has been working as the organization’s director for 10 years and admits he began working there by accident.

Updated 26/6/2016 - Rachel Kitonyo is no longer Executive Director of the Institute for Legislative Affairs.

Tobacco has Rachel Kitonyo hooked. But not on the disease causing substance, rather the process of pushing tobacco control in Kenya.

Rachel’s addiction began when she formed the Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILA) in 2004. She began working as the ILA’s executive director and started lobbying the Kenyan government to enact tobacco control legislation.

Although the Panamanian Coalition Against Smoking (COPACET) is only three years old, the organization has already received an international award for its work towards enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion in Panama.

This year the awards, known as the Bloomberg awards, recognized governments and non-government organizations in low and middle-income countries that demonstrated extraordinary achievement in implementing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Despite the success of an award, such accomplishments do not come easy in the fight for tobacco control.

Updated 26/6/2016 - Olcott Gunasekera is no longer president of the Sri Lanka National Federation of Smoking and Health.

Sri Lanka was the first country in Asia, and the fourth in the world to ratify the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

One of the organisations working hard on the FCTC (and FCA member) in the country is the Sri Lanka National Federation of Smoking and Health (SLNFSH), based in Colombo.

Federation president Olcott Gunasekera said that since the SLNFSH was established in 1977 it has been tirelessly working to control Sri Lanka’s tobacco epidemic, even before tobacco was declared the cause of some non communicable diseases.